Stunned for 1d4 rounds

Well, the folks over at Wizards are working on 5th edition. Now, I have zero shock that they are. 4th edition has been a bit of an odd duck and I can't imagine it is really driving sales and the insanely fractured nature of the hobby has got to make some impact. Video games, however, are surely the biggest impact to the hobby.

So I am not at all surprised about a 5th edition in the works. I wasn't surprised with the "4.5" of D&D Essentials. These are things that come along every 2-3 years. Very predictable and an obvious necessity of the modern gaming market.

What shocks the hell out of me is that they are seeking input from players in such a public way. I doubt it will bring any unity to the fractured fan base, but it will likely be interesting. I'll be happy to give them my 2 cents when they ask but I know my opinions differ from many peoples.

My personal opinion is that they saw what happened with Pathfinder and are now taking a page from the Paizo playbook. Which makes me wonder if 5th edition will be more like a hybrid of previous editions. I wouldn't be surprised if it has a distinct "Old School" feel tossed in to make that crowd a little happy (they tend to complain a lot).

For me, it doesn't make much of a difference. Having the time and opportunity to game is a rare commodity of late. More than that, any mechanical differences are unlikely to be profound enough for me to switch fully over to 5th edition. If it maintains the core d20 mechanic I'll probably just treat it like I do 4th edition.

pick and choose, pick and choose

Legen...wait for it it....

So I was looking over at this Clevinger guy's website and he had nice things to say about this game.

It really is what 4e should have been. I really enjoyed reading it. Its a solid design. The only major thing I disliked was the lack of monsters. I think their idea was for the GM to build monsters kinda how PCs are made. That's a ton of prep work. They got a ton of feedback about it and are working on a Monster collection.

However, I am not convinced the system would not support using 3e or 4e monsters. I think there would be some minor balance issues, but nothing overwhelming. Against 3e monsters, low levels I think the PCs would dominate and at high levels that would taper off. Against 4e monster I think the balance issues would be nominal.

But then, I'm not convinced you can't throw 4e monsters against 3e PCs or 3e monsters against 4e PCs. Yes there are some mechanical and balance issues but I don't think they are as severe as people would make you believe. I've used 4e monsters in a savage worlds game with very little conversion and it worked fairly well.

This lends me to open my doors to lots of crazy ideas. I knew the next time I started the game I was going to just kinda tell the players they could play any race or class they liked from any 3e source they could find. I'll find a way to work it in, I welcome the challenge.

Jedi vs Dragon, sure, why not?

But, after thinking about it I really don't have an issue with people playing classes or races from Pathfinder in an otherwise 3e setting. There are some substantial differences there. If I am okay with that can I be okay with anything that is basically d20? I found that after a quick thought I really didn't have an issue with that.

Wanna play a 4e paladin in an otherwise 3e setting. Sure, I can make that happen. Wanna play a Legend Sage? Sure. Pathfinder Fighter? not an issue. Yes, it means I get to do some on-the-fly conversion stuff to make it happen but that's just not an issue for me. I think I can keep it all moving along without any real issues. I can fiddle the mechanics.

What about balance?

less like this, and...

Let me tell you about how game balance always works when I GM. A system comes out and it seems really balanced and what not. Then, one of my players intentionally or unintentionally smashes the game balance to hell somehow. So, yeah, going into a game thinking you won't have to fiddle with balance is just kidding yourself. It's a great dream, but really not worth the headache.

...more like this.

Which brings me back to letting players off the leash. They are going to wreck any game balance anyway so why try to stop them? Just work on keeping the mess cleaned up and otherwise have fun with it.

Which brings me to the main point of this post. I'm not going to get all hard core about "the game we are playing is D&D, or Pathfinder, or whatever". I wanna play "super awesome imagination fun time" (guitar whine, YEAH!).

So next game I run: Any d20 thing. Race, class, whatever. But, I get to draw from all the same sources. You play a multiclass 3e wizard/4e barbarian (somehow?). Fine. I have 4e Orcus with a machine gun.

Go gettim'.